by Alan Bristow
When we docked in Liverpool two doctors came on board to examine the engineer. They spent some time with him in the wardroom, poking this and pulling that, and one of them, a surgeon, said he didn’t think he’d have been able to do a better job himself.
Eight months after the Corabella picked us up, her captain’s assessment of her survival chances proved to be absolutely correct. On 30 April 1943, she was hit by torpedoes fired by U-515 130 miles off Freetown. She was carrying 8,000 tons of manganese ore and went down like a shot pheasant. Nine of her crew were killed, and their names are inscribed on the merchant seamen’s memorial on Tower Hill in London, along with those of 24,000 others who died in a largely unarmed service trying to keep Britain’s trade routes open. The following year, on 26 July 1944, the submarine that had sunk us, U-214, was depth-charged by the frigate HMS Cooke and sunk off the Eddystone Light with the loss of all forty-eight of its crew. Their names are inscribed on the U-boat memorial at Möltenort, near Keil, beside those of 30,000 other submariners who died trying to stop us.
Liverpool was full of people like us – officers and men whose ships had been sunk under them, who had lost friends and who had gone through hard times. We didn’t talk about it because it was a shared experience. Everybody was in the same boat, so to speak, and what was there to say? The powers-that-be staged a parade of survivors through the streets of Liverpool, marching several hundred of us through the city in our shabby rags to show the people what the Germans had done. I was wearing the remnants of my tropical gear; everything else was at the bottom of the Atlantic. It all seemed an unnecessary carnival. The Liverpudlians didn’t need us to show them what the Germans could do. They’d already suffered more than 300 air raids at that time, and the evidence was all around them.
Hussey Cooper and I were due some serious survivors’ leave. British India, while refusing to aggregate leave according to the number of sinkings, told us to get ourselves new uniforms and go home. We’d be called back when we were needed. We were on the train all night and I parted from Hussey Cooper at Bristol. He was going home to Wells, I to Bath, to which the families of many Admiralty staff had been evacuated. My father was in Malta, being plastered daily by German and Italian bombers; my sister Muriel was at school in Bournemouth. Mum had been allocated a comfortable, stone-built detached house in Combe Down, where no bombs had fallen. It was early in the morning when I walked up the path, and no one was stirring. The bell went unanswered. I knocked loudly, rattled the door, but there was no sound from within. I took a handful of gravel from the path and threw it at the upstairs windows. Finally, the window was thrown open and Mum leaned out.
‘Go away,’ she shouted. ‘Go on! Be off with you.’
I was stunned. Then I realised she didn’t know me. The bearded ragamuffin, skin burned brown by the tropical sun, was a stranger to her. My clothes were tattered and I was capless – there wasn’t one that fitted me when they were handing them out.
‘Mum. It’s me. Alan!’
The shock was palpable. She stood immobile for a moment, then slammed shut the window and came running down the stairs. By the time she got to the door she had regained some of her composure. She welcomed me with a hug. Not for years did I give much thought to what she was going through, waiting at home for news while her husband was under relentless attack and her son was on the high seas, getting himself sunk left and right. ‘What’s for breakfast?’ I said.
She took me shopping for clothes in some of the better stores in Bath. At that time, men who wore beards and civilian clothes were usually conscientious objectors, and sure enough, as I was walking down the street I was shouted at.
‘Bloody conchie!’
I rounded on my abuser. ‘I’ll have you know I’m a merchant navy officer!’
‘Oh, sorry guv’nor . . . no offence meant.’
But I took the hint. As soon as I got home, off came the beard.
The late summer of 1942 was a restful, other-worldly interlude. Combe Down had a flourishing cricket club and I walked there to watch Somerset play. With many players in the forces, wartime county cricket was restricted to friendly matches. I sat in the sunshine with a beer, watching the play unfold lazily on the pitch the whole day long. But Japanese destroyers and German submarines were in my mind in the night. A few weeks after my leave began, I was combing my hair in the morning when all the hair on the side of my head came away in one big mass, leaving me looking like I’d been inexpertly scalped. I went to see a doctor.
‘Shock,’ he said. ‘You’re a very lucky man.’
‘How so?’
‘This could have manifested itself in any number of major defects that could have been debilitating for you. Tics and twitches, nervous disorders, even organ failure. You should be very grateful it’s come out like this.’
‘That’s all right for you to say. I’m nineteen and I’m bloody bald!’
I didn’t want to believe him – I didn’t feel like I was suffering from shock – and sought a second opinion from a neighbour, also a doctor, who had a son flying Wellingtons with the RAF and a daughter who was a nurse. He confirmed the diagnosis. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘This is a very temporary, minor change in your life.’
It was hard to look on it with equanimity, but Mum was pragmatic. ‘You’ll just have to come to terms with it, young man,’ she said. ‘You’ve got all your faculties and your nervous system is intact. You’ve broken no bones, lost no limbs. That should be enough.’ Her lecture helped me put things into perspective, but still, the loss of my hair was a humiliation. For years I never went anywhere without a hat. In places where one should take off one’s hat, I did not take my hat off. My hair never grew back. I was left with just enough to drag a streak or two across the top, in the style that I think became known as the ‘Bobby Charlton’. One day, many years in the future, my wife Jean got sick of this comb-over and cut the whole lot off right down to the roots, and that was the end of it. From 1942 on I looked older than I was, which became an advantage when I was trying as a young man to get business with the oil companies. But that was scant consolation when I was still a teenager.
CHAPTER 5
Urge to Fly
I received notification from British India that my next ship was to be MV Chyebassa, a superb modern ship then under construction at Barclay Curle on the Clyde. She was a cargo ship with a refrigerated hold and cabins for twenty-four passengers, and she could make seventeen knots. Shortly before she was due to launch a fire broke out in one of the cargo holds while they were putting the finishing touches to the refrigeration, and took such a hold that at one point the ship was thought to be endangered. Glasgow’s firemen spent the best part of a day putting her out, and the officers resigned themselves to a period of inactivity while repairs were made. Several cadets were temporarily assigned to other ships, and I was told to report to Urlana, another new ship then taking on a cargo of government stores in Glasgow. I was never involved in cargo loading and had little idea what we were carrying at any one time, but I knew that ‘government stores’ was a euphemism for guns, ammunition, bombs, torpedoes, petrol and every type of thing that could explode, and the chances of survival on such a ship if you fell foul of a U-boat were very slim indeed. I had seen Urlana before – she had been lying in Madras alongside Ellenga, and the contrast could not have been more stark. Launched only a few months before, Urlana looked neat, tidy and beautifully turned out, in contrast to the work-weary forty-year-old Ellenga. She was more heavily armed than any merchant ship I had seen, with twelve-pounders fore and aft and Oerlikons amidships.
As an acting Fourth Officer I shared accommodation aboard with three fellow cadets, Taylor, Turk and de Millington. We watched with close interest as thousands of boxes of ‘government stores’ were swung aboard. None of us voiced our fears, but it was clear that if we were unlucky enough to be hit, we were going to be blown sky high. We sailed from the Clyde in October 1942 and joined a convoy of perhaps sixty ships off the west c
oast of Scotland. I was not the only supernumerary on board; we had a dozen men who had been specially trained in the operation of landing craft, two of which we had lashed to the deck. Every hour during my watch I had to go below and take the temperature at a dozen points where thermometers had been fastened to the bulkhead. In the dim light, torpedoes lay in racks next to boxes of fuses and shells, and there was a pervasive smell of the tons of petrol we were carrying. It was not a duty I relished. My mother was constantly writing me letters urging me to take up my place at Cambridge; down below in Urlana I began to think she had a very good point. My action station was the starboard wing of the bridge where twin 20-mm Oerlikons had been mounted. The guns could fire at the rate of 600 shells a minute and were primarily for anti-aircraft defence, but could be depressed to sea level in case of submarine attack. As we steamed slowly south and west the Captain, another Welshman, made some unnecessary announcements about keeping a watch for the Condor, the German high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, but we saw nothing. There were several alerts but none came to anything; rough weather helped deter any attacks. More ships joined the convoy until there were vessels from horizon to horizon, many of them troopships, other destroyers, minesweepers and corvettes. At dead of night we steamed through the Straits of Gibraltar marvelling at the bright lights of Tangier to starboard. We expected the Mediterranean U-boat fleet to be unleashed on us at any moment, but when Urlana dropped anchor off Algiers the next night we hadn’t had a sniff of the enemy. Nobody was quite sure who the enemy was; the Vichy French controlled Algiers on behalf of the Germans and we could hear shooting from the port as we swung out the landing craft and waved them off empty. They began ferrying troops ashore from other ships, and next morning Urlana sailed into Algiers unopposed to begin unloading. We went to action stations when a French Dewoitine flew over the city, but it made no move to disrupt the frantic activity in the harbour. There were endless delays in putting our cargo ashore, but in two days and nights of ceaseless activity the ship was relieved of much of her cargo and put to sea with a small contingent of troops on board.
Rather than heading west we set course east with a small convoy, steaming 150 miles to a place called Bougie where another landing had been planned. We were accompanied by an aircraft carrier, HMS Argus, and several corvettes. Shortly after noon next day we anchored close beneath some cliffs and began offloading the rest of our government stores. The landings had been virtually unopposed but there was a shortage of boats for getting our cargo ashore. Bougie Bay quickly filled up with ships, but the aircraft carrier withdrew when it was clear the French were co-operating. We had it all our own way until a group of Italian three-engined torpedo bombers flew in to attack. They were relatively slow and clumsy, and two of them were shot down within minutes. But their arrival signalled the start of a relentless aerial assault that went on for three days. They were followed by a swarm of German Ju88s who pressed home their attack even in the face of murderous anti-aircraft fire from the ships in the bay. At my action station I blasted away with my Oerlikon, but on that first day I failed to hit any of them. I never seemed to allow enough lead. The Ju88s were followed by Heinkel torpedo bombers. Several ships were hit around us and began to settle in the water, but Urlana had a charmed life. Unloading commenced again under cover of darkness, but next morning the assault continued, this time from Ju87s. There were perhaps twenty ships within sight in the bay, and between them they were able to put up a vicious anti-aircraft barrage. We’d get two or three hours’ respite, then the siren would go and up you’d rush to your station and it started all over again. Time after time I saw Stukas disappear in a fountain of seawater as a shell found its mark, and the crews would stop work and cheer. On the second day, at least six Stukas were shot down with only one merchant ship hit. One bomb exploded in the sea less than fifty yards off the Urlana’s bow, and another hit the ship with a resounding clang on the starboard side of the forward No. 2 hatch, scraped down the side of the ship ripping off paint and disappeared into the water without exploding. It was exciting, nerve-racking and exhausting. Sleep was impossible, the appetite went, but again, fear was not an issue. The action was so intense that all one’s concentration was fixed on the task in hand.
On the morning of the third day a group of three Stukas singled out the Urlana and began an attack, screaming down from five thousand feet with a hideous siren wail. Tiny black bombs detached themselves in the last thousand feet and fell lazily towards the ship, while every gun followed the Stukas as they grew ever larger, then pulled out low over the water and climbed away. Furiously I sweated, shouted and swore as I tried to twist the guns onto the target with the shoulder supports, the tracer curving up at the enemy and criss-crossing with fire from other ships. By the time the second Stuka came I had my eye in, and as it screamed louder overhead the shells tore metal off the fuselage and wing. Instead of pulling out it turned almost onto its back, hit the sea, cartwheeled and disappeared. With the third bomber diving on the same trajectory I fire-hosed a stream of shells into its path, and it too failed to pull out, smashing into the sea less than fifty yards off the starboard bow. A cheer went up on Urlana, and a wave of euphoria swept over me. Jumpy and trembling, I felt an urgent need to sit down and collect my wits. A man called Hogan, whose father had apparently won the VC in the First World War, handed me a flaskful of rum and I gulped it down, spilling it all over myself and almost choking. Then he stuck a cheroot in my mouth and lit it. Nausea overwhelmed me. At that time I was neither a drinker of strong spirits nor a smoker, but I have to thank Hogan for introducing me to two of the great pleasures of my life. I have since smoked many thousands of good cigars, and I subscribe to Mark Twain’s dictum that if I cannot smoke cigars in heaven, then I shall not go.
Next morning the Captain ordered the last of the barges to cast off and Urlana set course alone for Avonmouth to pick up a new load of ‘government stores’. We were all permanently on edge, seeing submarine periscopes everywhere, but in the event we escaped attack. Out in the Atlantic we were able to get some rest. In the mess, we discussed our prospects of survival. One of the cadets, John de Millington, had a plan. He was going to leave the merchant navy and join the Royal Air Force to become a pilot. De Millington was a studious and thoughtful young man, widely read – he was reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson at the time – and his ambition crystallised in my mind the idea of getting out of the merchant navy and into a fighting service where I wouldn’t have to sit waiting to be attacked. Not only did de Millington’s enthusiasm appeal to me enormously but it began to infect the two most senior cadets, Turk and Taylor, both of whom were awaiting appointments in the rank of Fourth Mate. By the time Urlana reached Avonmouth the plan had evolved. The four of us would apply together for RAF pilot training, making no reference to our merchant navy background but pretending to be students in our last year at university, fed up with being in a ‘reserved occupation’ and not doing our bit for the war effort. So we jumped ship, split up and agreed to meet in Russell Square in London two days hence.
Looking for all the world like students in our casual civilian clothes, de Millington, Turk, Taylor and I mustered in Russell Square at the appointed hour and presented ourselves at the RAF recruiting office, expecting to be gratefully snapped up, trained as pilots and unleashed on the Hun. We were not the only young men who wanted to be pilots that day, as we soon discovered. Beyond the reception desk was a large room full of would-be air aces. We underwent a basic medical examination before sitting down and waiting to be called for interview. Names were being read out over the loudspeaker in alphabetical order. It wasn’t long before they came to the Bs. ‘Bristow!’
I walked into the interview room feeling nervous and tense. I don’t know why. For a moment I felt like I didn’t want to be there. But it was too late. A Warrant Officer beckoned me to a seat in front of a long table at which sat a Group Captain. At his right and left hands sat a Squadron Leader, an air gunner, a female Flight Lieutenant doctor, a Win
g Commander and a Flight Lieutenant wearing the wings of an observer. Two of the pilots were wearing medals of distinction – the DSO and DFC – and there were several campaign ribbons.
The doctor opened the interrogation by asking if anyone in my family suffered from heart problems, diabetes or cancer. I was able to advise her that everyone in my family was in rude health. Then the Group Captain spoke up.
‘Young man, why do you want to join the Air Force?’
My answer sounded hollow, even as I was saying it. I wasn’t enjoying my last year’s studies at Cambridge, I said, when so many of my friends had joined the combatant services. Being in a ‘reserved occupation’ made me uncomfortable with myself, and I was determined to see combat as an RAF pilot.
The Squadron Leader interjected. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bristow but today we are only enlisting applicants for training as air gunners.’
This came as a shock. I stammered something to the effect that I wanted to be a Spitfire or a Lancaster pilot, and not an air gunner because it didn’t provide the level of leadership that I was looking for.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated, ‘the only vacancies are for air gunners.’
I thanked the panel and walked out feeling thoroughly downcast. My friends could see from my body language that things hadn’t gone as expected.
‘They’re not recruiting pilots,’ I said. ‘They only want air gunners.’
‘To hell with that,’ said Taylor. ‘I want to fly fighters.’